Chicks with Guns

Much has been written about the relationship men have with guns. Photographer Lindsay McCrum’s new book Chicks with Guns1 instead explores the relationship between woman and guns. The photography looks amazing. I will definitely be buying a copy.

“Their numbers are really high but their profile is actually really low,” said McCrum, who spent three and a half years capturing artistic and arresting portraits of women with their weapons of choice.

“I was so surprised by the variety and breadth and diversity of these women,” McCrum said. “There are so many stereotypes about guns, mostly derived from popular culture, but the reality is so much more complex and varied than you can imagine.”

“Chicks with Guns” reveals just how true that is. The book features nearly 80 portraits and captions in which women describe the role of guns in their lives in their own words. It quickly becomes apparent that rich women, poor women, young women, old women, athletic women, sedentary women and a fair number of confident girls possess guns for reasons that are peculiarly their own.

In Chicks with Guns, Lindsay McCrum has created a cultural portrait of women gun owners in America through photographs that are both beautiful and in a sense unexpected. The book examines issues of self-image and gender through the visual conventions of portraiture and fashion, but the guns are presented here not as superimposed props but as the very personal lifestyle accessories of the subjects portrayed. And it defies stereotypes often associated with aspects of the popular culture of both guns and women. Like the 15-20 million women gun owners in this country, the women we meet in Chicks with Guns ( their portraits are accompanied by their own words), reside in all regions of the country, come from all levels of society, and participate seriously in diverse shooting activities. The women here are sportswomen, hunters, and competition shooters. Some use guns on their jobs and some for self-defense. They may not all be classically beautiful, but in these photographs they all look beautiful, exuding honesty, confidence, poise, power and pride. They are real women with real guns that play a part in their lives. By focusing her camera respectfully on this particular aspect of the American scene, gun-wielding women and girls, Lindsay McCrum sheds new light on who we are in America today.

[ Many thanks to jdun1911 for emailing me the link. ]

This is a non-affiliate link. In other words, I don’t get paid to promote the book. ↩